Change of Plans

Hello First Grade Families,

I hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day Weekend!  I know I did!  We packed in our 4 day week with lots of activities.  Before I go over what we did, I would like to inform you of a schedule change.

OUR NATURE CENTER FIELD TRIP FOR THIS MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 HAS BEEN CANCELED.  I will reschedule it as soon as I can.  I sent a note home with the students, but also wanted to post here just in case the note was misplaced.  Thank you for your understanding!

Ok... here's what we did this week!

Reading:

• Finished reviewing our letters, sounds, short vowels and high frequency words.
• We sang silly songs to help us remember what our short vowel sounds are- ask them to sing one for you!
• We are getting ready for next week when we will have our first official spelling words and our first story!
• Please practice reading the blue high frequency word cards that go in the blue envelope with your child every night!

Math:

• Finished Topic 3 and took our first ever math quiz and test!
• Started Topic 4 today and will continue with that topic for the next couple weeks.  We will be working on different addition and subtraction strategies.
• For reinforcement at home, start practicing math facts with flash cards every night.
• Soon we will be starting to take timed math fact "tests" to practice our facts.

Health:

• We talked about Safety this week and ways we can be safe at home, outside and at school.
• We also brainstormed careful and careless behaviors.
• Next week we will talk about feelings.

Don't forget.... the book fair is coming next week!  Our browse date is Monday and our buy date is Wednesday.  Also- Curriculum Night is on Thursday evening.  I hope to see you all there!

Check out the side pages to see what else is going on next week.

Have a great weekend :)

Ms. Petrucci

Quick Friday Update

Hello First Grade Families!

Here's just a quick update to send you off to enjoy your long weekend!

The All About Me posters are due Tuesday, so please finish those up over the weekend!

We finished our first topic in Math so I sent home a "study guide" for the students to complete to prepare for their first quiz on Tuesday.  If they complete it and turn it in on Tuesday, they will get a smelly sticker.  We will be completing the quiz together to teach them how to take a quiz.

I have not updated the pages yet... I will try to do that by Tuesday!

We had a great first FULL week of school!  I am looking forward to seeing these guys on Tuesday!

Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend :)

"Pages"

Hello First Grade Families!

I hope you've taken some time to explore this blog to see what we've been up to so far in school.  I'd like to introduce you to the Pages section which is located on the right hand side of this page.  You will see several different links.  If you click on those links, they will take you to a different page where you can find even more information.  I'll briefly go over each page, so you know what to expect when you click on that link.

Spelling Corner:
This is where you will find our weekly spelling and bonus words.  You will get a paper copy of these words, but I know sometimes those can get lost!  This way you have the words whenever you need them.  You will also find a weekly fun spelling activity that you can complete with your child at home.  If it's something they can turn in on paper, they will get a smelly sticker if they bring it back to school.  Just an extra incentive to practice spelling words at home!  Once we get past our review in reading, we will have weekly spelling words that will be posted in this section.

Weekly Schedule:
This is where you will find what is happening in our classroom/school/district for the week.  Our specials schedule is on there as well as any special events happening before, after or during the school day.

Homework:
This is where you will find a list of our daily homework assignments and when they're due.  I will also post when certain forms (permission slips, etc.) are due so you're never wondering :).  I am going to try to give homework 3-4 times per week in addition to daily spelling and reading practice.

Scholastic:
This is where you can find a link to our classroom's Scholastic Book Club page.  Our online class code is also on there so you can complete your Parent order online without having to send the order forms or money to school.  MUCH easier and we get special incentives for online ordering!  Win win!

Please take the time to check out those links and as always, let me know if you have any questions!
Have a great day,
:) Ms. Petrucci

The First Friday News!

Hello first grade families!

We had a great first week in first grade!  We're getting adjusted to going to school for a FULL day and learning how to be Respectful, Responsible, Safe and Proud in our school.  We have already visited a handful of our special classes, but we will get to go to Art on Monday and meet Ms. Marino!  If you have not yet brought in an art smock or portfolio, please do so as soon as possible.  If you have any questions about those items, please email me and I will try to help you as best as I can.

I'm an enjoying getting to know your children and am excited to get into the swing of thing with our first full week of school next week.  There will be no homework in Reading this week, but you will see a page go home for math on Tuesday.  It will be on green paper.  This is due on Wednesday.  There are also a few projects that will be coming home the next few weeks.  There was one sent home today, the All About Me poster.  Please read the attached note and let me know if you have any questions.  Feel free to turn that in before the assigned due date.  As soon as I start receiving posters, I will have the students start presenting them!

I hope you all have a wonderful and safe weekend!
:) Ms. Petrucci

First Day Hooray!

Hello and welcome to my classroom blog!  We had a wonderful first day in first grade and I am so delighted to have all of your children in my class this year.  Please feel free to subscribe to this blog and post comments!  Also, make sure to send me an email so I can create a class email list.

I look forward to seeing you all at Curriculum Night in a couple of weeks.  Please feel free to email me if you have any questions before that day arrives!

Here's a couple of photos from our very first day!  Enjoy :)

OFFICIALLY First Graders!

Silly Faces!

Our class with Miss Pagano (left) and Ms. Lash (right)

Ms. Petrucci and her lovely 23 First Graders :)

Mother's Day

We had a fun week in room 7 getting ready to celebrate Mother's Day.  I hope you all have a fabulous weekend celebrating the most important ladies.... MOMS!  I know I owe a lot to my mom and I am very lucky that all my students have such great moms in their lives.  Enjoy the day ladies (don't worry Dads, your day will be here soon!)  You all deserve it!  I hope you enjoy the gift your child made you.  I thought they were very sentimental and cute.  They were incredibly excited to make it and give it to you all!  I hope you cherish it forever and ever!

This week went by pretty fast!  We were finishing up some testing and now we can officially say WE ARE DONE WITH STANDARDIZED TESTING FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR!  YAHOOOOO!

We read the story "Frog and Toad All Year" for Reading and we focused on the comprehension skill of cause and effect.  The students came up with some great scenarios and examples (some of them may have been from their own experiences ;)).  I heard a lot of "The cause is having a messy room after playing..." with various effects.  They had a great time comparing different cause/effect situations.

In math we are finishing up our very short fraction unit.  They are just getting a little taste of fractions and getting exposed to words like "halves" and "quarters".  This will give them a little background knowledge as they dive deeper into fractions in the upper grades.  Once we finish that, we will be Stepping Up to Second Grade to give them a little taste of what's to come next year.

We are still studying organisms in Science and will dive into Animal Families next week!  I have some fun writing projects planned and I can't wait to see what they come up with!

There's lots of fun coming up in the next few weeks of school!  I can't believe the entire year has already gone by!  I hope you all have an amazing weekend!  I'll see some of you on Monday for our Nature Center Field Trip!

May!

It's been awhile since my last blog post!  Let's do some catching up!

In Reading we are on our very last basal reader!  We just read "The Story of the Bluebird", which is about a little bird who is a afraid to learn how to fly.  He ends up on a little adventure and eventually forgets his fear of flying.  In doing so, he learns how to fly and is able to make new bird friends.  Our phonics/spelling skill was "igh".  This is a difficult vowel sound, but the students did very well with it.  We learned a rap to help us remember the "igh" in the words.  We also discussed what the plot of the story is.  We discovered the plot is all the "meat" in the story.  It's all the important events that happen to move the story along.  Next week, we will read the story "Frog and Toad All Year" and focus on the long a sound (ai and ay) as well as supporting details in the text.

We are just finishing up our Geometry unit in Math.  We discussed plane (flat) shapes and solid figures! Some of those solids are really hard to pronounce (hearing them try to say Sphere for the first time was quite entertaining)!  We got the hang of our pronunciations and even learned how to tell different shapes and solids from one another by using the number of sides, corners, flat surfaces, vertices and line types (curved or straight).  Our next and FINAL math unit will be on Fractions.  After that short unit, we will do some step up to 2nd grade lessons and review some concepts taught earlier in the year!  Time is FLYING by!

In Science, we are studying Organisms, Animal Families and the pond habitat.  We kicked off our unit by getting a visit from some batty bats!  We had such a great time learning more about these interesting, but misunderstood creatures!

We were able to see the musical Aladdin at Peacock on Monday.  It was AMAZING!  If your family has time, you should definitely check it out this weekend.  The middle schoolers and their teachers did an excellent job with this one!  The kids LOVED it!  A lot of them haven't seen the movie version of Aladdin so I'm thinking of showing it some time next week to do a compare/contrast activity on the similarities and differences!

I hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Ms. Petrucci